7 Reasons to Love Your Age

At 42, I Moved Beyond Fear

"For seven years, I vacationed in the surfer town of Montauk, New York. For seven years, I wanted to surf—but didn't. I told myself it was too hard, that I was too old to learn. This despite the fact that I've always been an athlete, jumping fences on horseback and riding my bike through slippery urban traffic. A little fear was part of the thrill. Then, in my mid-30s, that illusion of immortality vanished and the smallest trace of fear felt threatening. Yet I did not want fear to own me. After all, my friends were surfing, and I was drawn to the way they seemed to float on the surging waves.

"So last summer, my 42nd, after a bad breakup, I found a surf instructor—not blond, buff and chiseled but bald, wiry and short—and fell in love. It wasn't romantic love, but better. He told me to look fear in the eye and say, 'Thanks for having me. I'll come again.' As he pushed me into a small wave, I worried that I'd get caught in the churning water. In reality, I got a head dunking and some very clean sinuses. I could handle that. My instructor said that every time he saw a wave rearing up, he still got scared, so he paddled. 'You have to trust your body,' he told me. So I borrowed his trust in the hope that I'd find my own. It was humiliating to wipe out, but I stuck with it, trusting that I'd improve with practice. (A benefit of age is that you care less about looking foolish and you know the value of persistence.) Finally, I stood up, riding all the way to the beach. Fear, it turned out, was more of a coward than I had imagined. I had been the one giving it power all along." —Anna Marrian

At 28, I Surprise Myself Daily

"When I was 24 and five months pregnant, my husband, Josh, died in an accident. I'd always assumed my 20s would be a time to find a life and settle into it. I was prepared to be a wife who didn't do the cooking but always washed dishes (cooking was never my thing), who never drove on long car trips but packed good snacks. After Josh's death, I felt lost. I was a rudderless ship, then a rudderless ship with a baby.

"To survive my new single-mom role, I had to adapt. I started small, learning to make a meal or two. (Cooking wasn't so bad, after all.) I realized that, with time and patience, I could learn to do almost anything. Before my son, Kai, had his first birthday, I completed my first Olympic-distance triathlon. When he turned 2, I single-handedly assembled his big-boy bed. Women tend to see their age as something to fear; the more the number goes up, the more afraid and ashamed we get. But that's only a matter of perception. I see my age as a percentage of awesomeness. I'm 28, so I'm at 28 percent awesomeness. At 35, I predict that I'll be stronger and smarter and, I hope, have more money in the bank. (Think of all I can learn in seven years.) So you can call it aging. I'll call it evolving." —Natalie Taylor

At 78, I'm Still Diving In

"I'll admit it: I'm not particularly looking forward to my family's annual summer reunion at the lake this year. I've always gone enthusiastically. But now I am 78, and I will have to buy a new bathing suit. The other day, I put on my old one and discovered that the bra had disintegrated and the seat was see-through. I thought, Gee, this used to have shape and substance—like me! Why couldn't my family have chosen a mountain for this reunion or, even better, a city?

"Of course, I could stay home. Or I could sit on the shore in my cover-up, watching as my grandchildren jump off the dock and collect rocks on the beach and climb into the kayak. I could observe the sporting life as it passes me by. But I won't. I'll go, and when I hear 8-year-old Chancey call, 'Grandma, it's time for water ballet!' I will look at my 70-year-old sister, Susie, and grin. Together, we'll watch the grandchildren, so joyously alive, just like the two of us. Then I'll shed my cover-up, and there I'll be in my new bathing suit on my old body, which, despite three mornings a week at the gym, continues to succumb to gravity.

"Water ballet, directed by Susie, is a long-standing family tradition. It's girls only, and participation is required. It works like this: We form a line with Susie; her daughter, Katherine, 46; my daughter-in-law, Mary, 30; Chancey, who will be old enough to join for the first time; and me. My sister will wave a graceful arm: 'And up and back,' she'll say. 'Smile!' The floral skirt of my new suit will billow across the water as my sister exhorts, 'Take hands! Kick!' We will, producing a geyser of water that will catch the sun and make its own rainbow. Then, the grand finale: We'll sink down, then catapult ourselves straight up and out of the water. On the dock, 3-year-old Maude will most likely be dancing, her red curls springing up in the sunlight. 'Grandma,' she'll shout. 'Come get me!' Participation is definitely a requirement. And so we'll dive under the water and tickle the toes of the children who came from our children. 'Watch out for Grandma!' they'll call. 'She's trying to get us!' How could I even think about passing up an opportunity like that?" —Jane Juska

At 37, I Make My Own Rules

"In seventh grade, when my friends were die-hard Madonna wannabes wearing crucifix earrings, I imagined being witty, elegant Mrs. Green, the mother of the kids I babysat on Saturday nights. I envied how her life seemed set yet exciting, every choice her own to make. In contrast, my own angst level fluctuated according to a complicated formula involving my parents' rules, friends' moods and pop-quiz scores.

"Now, at 37, I'm about the age Mrs. Green was then, and I'm the one in the cocktail dress heading out to a party. There's a comforting certainty to things, just as I'd hoped there would be back in the days when I fantasized about being airlifted out of adolescence. The pecking order of priorities in my life is so clear, it's almost exhilarating: family, friends (there's not a mean one in the bunch) and work, with a morning Spin class or lap swimming shoehorned in. Tomorrow, I might shake up the itinerary; that's what I love about being at the steering wheel of my own life. True, I have a copilot (my husband) and three very vocal kids in the backseat, all begging me to stop singing along with Justin Bieber. But the only person who really lays down the law with me is my dentist. (I'm not so great about flossing.)

"Sure, there are developments I never anticipated (insomnia, for one). But as I head into midlife, liberated from parental regulations in a way I once only dreamed of, I know I've landed in exactly the right place. I've even devised a few rules of my own, shaped by what has forged me (marriage, motherhood, doing work I love): Treat the babysitter like family; good shoes are worth the extra money. Most useful: Curiosity trumps all. I've been on this earth long enough to know that there's no sense in predicting what's around the bend. It's more fun to be surprised." —Elisabeth Egan

At 49, My Face Says It All

"Recently, I've noticed how many of my contemporaries, (many of us heading toward 50) have had a bit of work done. If they looked as weird as Cher, fine, but they don't. Their faces are fresh and smooth in contrast to my own, and it's hard not to feel ugly by comparison. It doesn't help that these women occasionally see fit to lecture me—"You don't have to look this way"—as if aging were a disease from which they've recently recovered‚ one for which I've stubbornly refused treatment. Yet every time I'm close to calling a surgeon, I take a giant step back. For one thing, my husband swears he will leave me for a younger woman if I dare fiddle with my face. And on occasions when I subtly put the possibility of surgery out there, my children accuse me of fishing for compliments. But the truth is that no cosmetic procedure will ever give me back the younger me, just a different me, and that different me might be a stranger. My energy would be better spent coming to terms with the face that represents who I am today—part grown-up, part teenager, part writer, part mother, part wife and lover. My character is stamped on my face. I'm not about to let a doctor mess with that." —Bella Pollen

At 44, I Have So Many Choices

"The first time a colleague referred to me as 'middle-aged,' I had no idea who he was talking about. As far as I was concerned, I looked and felt as if I were 30. I still wore the same stylish clothing, still ran the same few miles three times a week, and my friends still considered me to be the one with all the energy. In fact, at 42, I'd gone back to get a graduate degree in psychology, which is how I ended up interning in a mental-health clinic with a bunch of much younger colleagues. The first week, a young woman asked a cute male intern, 'Do you know who Lori is?' And he replied, not knowing I was walking by, 'Yeah, she's the one with reddish-brown hair, middle-aged…' I stopped cold. Part of me had started to develop a crush on that male intern. Now I did a quick calculation and realized that 'middle-aged' meant 'sexually invisible.' At least to a 30-year-old guy.

"Once I got over my shock, the real surprise set in. As I watched my colleagues stress out over minor mistakes or try so hard to prove themselves, I recognized a younger self that I'd happily outgrown. I had a track record, a perspective that allowed me to embrace the things that caused me so much anxiety when I was younger—uncertainty, new situations. I was finally comfortable enough to do what I wanted, even if that meant going to grad school to pursue a passion 15 years later than everybody else. The great thing about getting older is that instead of having fewer choices, I have so many more." —Lori Gottlieb

At 50, I'm Keeping My Vow

"'You tell your age as if you're proud of it,' my friend Lisa accuses me whenever I mention it. Which is often. Last year, she and I were in a boutique, and I asked the tattooed salesgirl if the fringed shirt might be a bit too wild for a 49-year-old woman. 'You're 49?' the girl said, incredulous, too young to know what 49 looked like. My friend pulled me behind a sales rack to complain about my obsession with trumpeting my age. 'Why must everyone know?' she asked.

"The reason is simple. It's because of a promise I made to another friend back in 1981. Instead of enjoying the autumn day, I was sitting on a metal chair in a hospital, watching Ed die of AIDS. He was 31, talented, loving and incredibly sexy in a leather jacket. His life ended long before time could line his pale cheeks. But that morning, as I watched his chest stop moving, I could think only of what Ed would have traded for the chance to grow old. So I silently vowed to honor the life he never got to finish by celebrating my ability to finish my own. I promised myself I would never complain about my sheer luck at having the gift of another day. Another decade. That's a promise I hope I get another 40 years to keep." —Brett Paesel